Facebook Launches ‘Facebook Offers’ For Businesses

A few select brands on Facebook are currently running tests of a new Facebook product for businesses called “Offers.” The most recent Offer, which generated a fair amount of buzz in the past week, was posted by Macy’s. Macy’s first posted the Offer on Thursday, February 23rd at 7:11am Pacific with an expiration date of February 26th. The Offer was: “Get 25% off your purchase of $100 or more.”

The Offer jumped out at me in my News Feed last Thursday when a friend of mine (plus six others!) claimed the Offer. Then I saw the Offer repeatedly in my News Feed, so clicked through to Macy’s to check it out on their wall too.

Macy's Facebook Offer - appeared in the News Feed when friends claimed the Offer

Simple, one-click claim – INCLUDING on mobile!

What’s super exciting about this new Facebook product for businesses, is the absolute simplicity and ease with which users can claim the Offer. Literally ONE click and Facebook lets you know the Offer is in your email inbox!

One click on "Get Offer" and Facebook emails you details!

Users can claim the Offer from the wall of the brand’s fan page.

Or, users can claim the Offer from their News Feed. Including MOBILE. Hello? Yes, mobile. Now that is thrilling.

More than half of Facebook’s 845 Million active users access the site via their mobile devices. Imagine the possibilities of Offers for your business! For local businesses. Wow. I haven’t been this excited about a new Facebook product since…. well, since last September when Subscribe came out. 😉

On that note, feel free to Subscribe to my Timeline public updates! Click the button below:

Einstein Bros Bagels Offer

By way of example on how super easy it is to claim an Offer on mobile, check out this recent Offer by Einstein Bros Bagels (claimed over 25,000 times so far!). I didn’t see this in my News Feed, per se. I just pulled up Einstein Bros Bagels on my iPhone and did the uber easy one-click claim:

Credit to AK Stout and this post on SayingItSocial.com where a commenter pointed out the Einstein Bros Bagels offer.

Redeem by email, share from email

Not only can users easily claim the offer from their News Feed – on any computer or mobile device – the actual offer can be redeemed simply by showing the coupon on your phone to Macy’s staff. See the email below:

Key takeaways from Macy’s Offer

Some points to note about Macy’s offer:

The offer was clean, simple, obvious and used a “%” sign and a “$dollar” amount.

Macy’s chose an extremely eye-catching image of a red shoe and a blue shoe on a white background, clearly chosen very strategically (red, white and blue = power color combo!). Plus, the fact it’s shoes – I don’t know any female out there who doesn’t love shoes. (Of course, many men claimed the Offer too!)

The choice of verbiage in the Offer was compelling: starting with “Get” (mirrored with the “Get Offer”), and the use of “save” and “BIG.” Clever!

Macy’s first posted the Offer on February 23rd, and posted it again on February 25th (Saturday morning at 7am Pacific) with the the description “Just two days left to get a head start on spring shopping!” (Einstein Bros Bagels did the same repeating of the Offer on its fan page wall, which of course goes into the fans’ News Feed again).

Ultimately, 41,602 people claimed the Macy’s Offer. And the original Offer post was shared a total of 2,491 times and the reminder of the Offer shared 374 times. Awesome social proof!

Will Facebook unveil Offers at the FMC today? [Update: Yes!]

Congrats, Facebook. I do believe you’ve found simplicity on the other side of complexity with this new Offers product.

Will Offers be one of the BIG new product launches announced at the Facebook Marketing Conference today? Rumor has it Facebook is unveiling a whopping 7 new changes/products/upgrades. We know that one will be Timeline for Pages. Another is new Premium Ads. And a third surely has to be these Offers—well, in fact I understand that Offers is part of the new Premium Ads product. [Update: turns out Offers are a standalone product and appear to be FREE to create and share! Select Pages only, so far.] And, I heard last Friday from a reliable source that currently only around 25 big brands even know about Offers. Hm, still, I sure hope the product is imminent for the rest of us.

Meantime, leave me a comment below with your thoughts on this hot new product, OFFERS!

UPDATE[2/29/12 1:30PM PST] – at the Facebook Marketing Conference, Offers were indeed one of the many new product announcements! See this new Help section for a review of the new Offers – currently only available to select brand pages. Plus, see this tutorial on Facebook for a review of the new Timelines for Pages.

Facebook 2012 Fan Page Checklist

To download my 14-page Facebook 2012 Fan Page Checklist, just pop your name and email below and I’ll give you instant access to this popular document (over 17,900 downloads!). The checklist part is the first five pages; the rest is all endnotes explaining the elements of your page and how best to set up and optimize for marketing and engagement.

This version is hot off the presses, and includes all the latest Facebook Timeline features.

Hi Mari, thanks so much for posting this. I did see the Macy’s offer but was in the middle of client work and it disappeared before I could react!
On another note, when I click Tweet to post this article, it only shows “Facebook To Launch http://www.marismith.com/facebook-offers/ via @marismith:disqus ” instead of the entire title. Since this is going to be a much tweeted article for you, you may want to fix it!
Have a great day!

http://marismith.com Mari Smith

Ohhhh @BetsyKent:disqus thank you for the headsup on the tweet truncation. Hmm, will get that fixed! Arrgh, you know what, just realized it’s the quotation marks. YEP, fixed – changed to single quotes. D’oh!

http://marismith.com Mari Smith

I know, right? SO cool!

Anonymous

The inclusion of mobile is really something new and from what i can see is going to give the mobile apps “push” feature something of a run for their money.

http://coupsmart.com/ Nick Sweeney

It seems like Facebook Deals with a bit more pixels added. The main problem with these deals as far as I can see is that they’re not very trackable, so determining ROI is still hard to discern WHO actually printed your coupon. Granted, I’m biased (I work for a company that has been creating trackable deals for a few years now), but it seems not much different than the aforementioned, now-defunct Facebook Deals.

http://www.720media.com Taa Dixon

This is exciting! I can’t wait to create special offers for our Facebook fans!

Anonymous

Mari this is so exciting. I think local businesses could really make this work well for them!

Nancy

Great information Mari, Thank you.

http://www.steveknipschild.com/ Steve Knipschild

Very Interesting info on the “Facebook offers” info about Macy’s deal. I’ll be curious to see how this plays out in the near future. The mobile aspect really interests me as I am also assisting clients on their mobile marketing for their businesses.

Jolene Kroeger

When is the “Offers” app available to everyone?

http://www.CravingTech.com/ Michael Aulia @CravingTech.com

Gotta think hard what Offers can do to ordinary informative blogs though. I guess we can sort of do some affiliate product discount offers and all that instead

http://marismith.com Mari Smith

I don’t know, but I hope SOON!

http://marismith.com Mari Smith

Yeah, I hear you @NickSweeney:disqus. However, with Offers going into the News Feed and the one-click claim anywhere on Facebook, including mobile, I’m convinced they will be far more successful than Deals were!

Jamie

This really is a great opportunity for businesses however, I’m wondering about a logistical issue. I’m assuming many of these offers will be ‘limit one per person’ and I’m wondering how you can track that if the person who claimed the offer prints it from their email or shows their phone. Is there a unique # perhaps? I couldn’t see anything about this in the Facebook FAQ.

http://www.cygnismedia.com/ Facebook App Developers

Kind of eCommerce?

http://eduardogomes.com.au/ Eduardo Gomes

Interesting. Let’s get ready to be bombarded with offers!

http://eduardogomes.com.au/ Eduardo Gomes

Interesting. Let’s get ready to be bombarded with offers!

http://twitter.com/hideaheart MCatherine Lunsford

When the app is available for the ‘wee’ biz, I’ll be keen to know about it.

http://twitter.com/hideaheart MCatherine Lunsford

When the app is available for the ‘wee’ biz, I’ll be keen to know about it.

Anonymous

Jumpin’ Jimmy this is so cool. Nothing like making it easy to get an offer in the hands of your target market. Email, Phone, Facebook. No excuses now.

http://www.profiletree.com/ ProfileTree

Interesting times ahead then for Groupon, Amazon local & all the similar sites…how will they compete with Facebook? I don’ think they will

Jane Miller

Love this post, Mari! Thanks for sharing – the value for small/local businesses is huge! Question: Do you think this will end up replacing “check-in deals?”

http://www.ginacarr.com/ Gina Carr

I agree that this is very exciting. I hope it rolls out to all businesses soon. Many small businesses can really benefit from this. I wonder how Facebook is going to monetize this feature.

http://www.ginacarr.com/ Gina Carr

I heard on a webinar by Facebook team that it WILL replace “check-in deals.” Offers will be available in similar form to current check in deals but will ALSO have this feature of News Feed placement.

http://www.facebook.com/BillPonce1 Bill Ponce

well i like all the buzz going on here. What to offer my home financing audience. Has anyone seen another Loan consultant doing this? Well here are some things I can offer. Free appraisal. Offer a class on how to make your home loan vanish. How to improve your Fico score. How to find free money. How to buy with little or nothing down to name a few.. im new to this.. is contacting Facebook CS good place to start. Im watching all the videos Facebook for dummies.

Hi Mari, wondering if you (or any of your fans) know if a page can run more than one Offer at a time (Eg. post offers a) and b) at the same time to see which gets better redemption.

Tried FB help, and a variety of Google searches but couldn’t come up with the answer! I figured if anyone would know, this would be the place to ask!

Justin Wu

Great blog, Mari! This is good way to snag deals while simply browsing through Facebook. Looks like they are looking to compete against Likeacoupon and Groupon etc. Hopefully this app can be used by everyone soon… It would be a big boost for small businesses!

Great facebook updates you provide in this post, These info is helpful for facebook user.

Business Facebook Page

Nice! As days goes by we can’t deny the fact that things do change in whatever aspect it belongs. One particular thing is technology, changes in technology is visible that is why most businessmen are slowly taking steps to adapt with these changes. They have already learned to socialize in the internet through the use of social media popularly facebook. Businessmen chooses to socialize with a bigger population in order for the business to grow and optimize.

ShopZooky is a new search engine for Facebook Offers. Mobile app let’s you search for nearby Facebook Offers from your iPhone or Android. Has cool sharing and notification features. Also includes support for Apple Passbook, so you can save your Facebook Offers to your iPhone’s Passbook wallet.

This is a nice content with lots of information. It’s a very excellent idea for raising money for charity. I think honest review is more important for authors. I like your whole discussion. Keep it up.

Thanks for this post Kevin. I’m still trying to “get” Google+. Definitely will buy Guy’s book. Are there any other resources you recommend for learning Google +? I’m a video based learner and the brief vids on Google+ weren’t really helpful. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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